Transformoney Tree

By Dadara on March 25, 2012

The Transformoney Tree will be the next stage of our Art as Money project, and the follow-up to the Exchanghibition Bank installation on the Playa in 2011. It will again deal with the value(s) of Money and Art in that vast moneyless desert. And we will need your help! We won’t need money, but we will need lots and lots of dollar (or other currency) bills……..

Does this sound a bit cryptic? Please read on and we will try to show, explain, and hopefully get you involved!

Our current form of currency is increasingly turning from a neutral medium of exchange into a system, solely based on our trust, that mortgages the present moment for a seemingly never arriving future payoff.

Interaction with the Transformoney Tree could help us with the shift from a fragile mono-money-culture to a diversified world of many alternative currencies, providing tools for exchange of various forms of value as a necessary alternative for our current debt-based-system, which is focusing on infinite economic growth on a finite planet.

Participants will be able to pick Exchanghibition Banknotes from the tree, while decorating its bark by gluing real banknotes onto it. In the process of interaction those banknotes will lose their financial value, but will add value to the artwork.

Are the roots of this tree the roots of all evil or the roots of all happiness? Hopefully they’ll become the roots of a new consciousness!

Money has become almost a part of our Nature, so it’s difficult to realize that for a big part of their history humans have lived without Money, and maybe this will be the case again in the future. But even long after Money will be gone, Nature will still be there and we might still be able to pick things of real value from trees.

For this project we will need a lot of dollar bills or other currencies and we will need your help: we are going to ask you for money – not as a financial instrument though, but as a material to create art……..

Interested to help us collect banknotes? Send us an email at inartwetrust (at) artasmoney (dot) com

You can send your banknotes physically by snail mail to:

In the U.S. : Transformoney Tree, c/o Nathan Richard Phelps, 1201 18th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94122, United States

@Raquel: we love the idea of people decorating the dollars which will go on the tree! We were already thinking about it. It also fits we the 2.0 theme – we are designing special 2.0 banknotes as leaves, but decorating and writing on the dollar bills would make it very 2.0 as well. If you send us a decorated banknote we will post it as well to stimulate others!

Couldn't people see the tree, say "WTF," be educated on the concept of your art, get turned on, go to their campsite and bring back currency, be involved in the piece and everyone could watch it grow as the week progressed? If it doesn't grow, THAT's the art!

I suspect you would get world currencies.

Are you restricting it to US money and why?

What kind of glue are you going to use and what will the surface for the bonding be?

You are thinking of travelling the piece? You will probably want to burn it on the playa.

A few good points! I have been thinking about world currencies. The initial motive for only one-dollar bills was out of aesthetic reasons (obviously aesthetic reasons are more important than financial ones…….), and I was thinking of having the tree travel and turn it into a world currency tree at a later stage, but of course Burning Man is all about Radical Inclusion, so I guess I should include world currencies from the start, as long as they are real currencies.

I love the idea of making people say 'WTF', go back to their campsite, bring back currency and instead of buying coffee or whatever donating it to the tree and gluing it on the bark. But think that spreading the word now already and starting with a lot of bills from the beginning will only stimulate this. Once there are two thousand banknotes glued on the tree I am sure it will stimulate people on the Playa much more to get involved.

As far as kinds of glue are concerned, I think I have to run a few tests. Obviously we don't want banknotes MOOPing the Playa!

I am not sure about burning the tree though. Somehow burning seems so anti-money instead of looking for an alternative for the money we have now. And besides that burning Money has already been done, and I don't feel I could do it any better………http://blog.artasmoney.com/art-as-money/burning-1…

A few good points! I have been thinking about world currencies. The initial motive for only one-dollar bills was out of aesthetic reasons (obviously aesthetic reasons are more important than financial ones…….), and I was thinking of having the tree travel and turn it into a world currency tree at a later stage, but of course Burning Man is all about Radical Inclusion, so I guess I should include world currencies from the start, as long as they are real currencies.

I love the idea of making people say 'WTF', go back to their campsite, bring back currency and instead of buying coffee or whatever donating it to the tree and gluing it on the bark. But think that spreading the word now already and starting with a lot of bills from the beginning will only stimulate this. Once there are two thousand banknotes glued on the tree I am sure it will stimulate people on the Playa much more to get involved.

As far as kinds of glue are concerned, I think I have to run a few tests. Obviously we don't want banknotes MOOPing the Playa!

I am not sure about burning the tree though. Somehow burning seems so anti-money instead of looking for an alternative for the money we have now. And besides that burning Money has already been done, and I don't feel I could do it any better………http://blog.artasmoney.com/art-as-money/burning-1…

Great idea, I have always loved de-facing money. personally i would prefer that any money i put on the tree did not become something of 'value' other than the value in appreciation. I would love to see the tree burnt at the end, after all it is burning man. if you cant (or dont want to burn it) maybe cut the tree down, and shred it, turn it into paper mache'. why sould a tree made of 'money' escape the fate that so many real trees of value face – woodchip? just my 2cents worth.